Card Player Profile: Daniel NegreanuNegreanu Talks About His Year in Poker, How His Game Has Changed, and How He's Preparing for 2008 |
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Daniel Negreanu has almost $10 million in lifetime tournament earnings. Excluding World Series of Poker main event champions, the Canadian native has won more money than anyone else playing tournament poker. His first six-figure score came 10 years ago, when he won his first WSOP bracelet. Though Negreanu has done well at the WSOP, if you look closely at his results, it is undeniable that many of his big wins have occurred during the colder months.
Lizzy Harrison: You always seem to play well during the winter, is there any reason for that?
Daniel Negreanu: I have no idea. It has been a clear pattern for me ever since the late ’90s. I start the year off well and I finish the year off strong. Somewhere in between I get complacent and lose a little bit of my focus. It may be that January and December are relaxing times for me, and so I am better able to focus.
LH: This past December, you went deep into the Doyle Brunson Five-Diamond World Poker Classic. Were you back on your A-game because of the season?
DN: I think I played great in that tournament; my focus was spot on. There was this really tough kid I played against, “Apathy” [Peter Jetten]. I played with him and Jordan Rich a lot throughout the tournament. It actually forced me to focus really hard on those guys in particular, because I did not know very much about them or their poker games. I think I was really skillful in doing that, and I was definitely able to outplay them, for the most part. Throughout the tournament, I do not think that I made any major mistakes. I was able to get the chip lead, and I maintained it for a while, but then I ran into two cooler hands. There was nothing I could do in either spot. Not winning was not my fault.
LH: What happened in the hands that you are referring to?
DN: I was faced with a situation where the Apathy kid was short-stacked, and he went all in for 200,000. He was basically looking to steal the blinds. Ryan Daut reraised him back, just a little bit, and I looked down to see that I had picked up two kings. I certainly could not fold; Daut plays such a wide range of hands. So, I decided to move it all in, there. Daut actually had pocket aces. From that point on, my chip lead took a big hit and I was no longer able to do the things that I wanted to do. I had to sit back and wait a little bit. My very last hand was against another tough player, Matthew Casterella. He raised my big blind from the button and I called with A-4. The flop came A-J-8, all hearts, and I had the 4 of hearts. Casterella had a lot of chips, so I knew he would have raised, and put in a continuation bet, with any hand. I decided that my worst case scenarios would be if he actually flopped a flush or he had a bigger heart. The odds of either of those being true were very slim. What was more likely was that he would fold if I moved all in. If he didn’t fold, that meant he had a set or two pair, and I would still have had a flush draw. Casterella thought about it for a long time and called me with A-8; he did not have a heart. I think he would have folded a hand like A-10 or A-Q. So, I needed a heart or a jack. When you really look at that hand, it seems like more of a cold deck than the kings I ran into aces. We both had an ace in our hand and an ace hit the flop with three hearts; it was just the worst possible flop for me. My all-in play was automatic, especially with how wide Casterella’s range of hands could have been.
LH: You played in a lot of World Poker Tour events this year; did you notice any difference, from past years, in the strength of the fields?
DN: They were tougher. There will be a point where they will get even tougher, and then they might get softer again for a little while. The World Series of Poker has become the barometer for poker success, when, in reality, the WSOP has a much lower overall skill level than the World Poker Tour. Frankly, it is not even close; the WPT has much tougher fields. The WSOP is, and always will be, a “donk-fest.” In the WPT events, the players get to play deep-stack poker, and, generally, that helps them to keep getting better.
LH: Looking back, what do you think about your play in 2007?
DN: I actually think that I played very well. My results were fine; I did have some good results. I think I was on the unlucky side, though, especially in some of the bigger tournaments. In the last four months, I feel like I have played even better than I have in the past. I have added a little versatility to my game, and that makes me more difficult to play against. I have done this especially for the some of the younger, aggressive players. I have basically made myself a tougher person to play poker against.
LH: How did you do that?
DN: I have been playing online on PokerStars a little bit more. I also added some weapons that were not in my repertoire, like, for example, bluffing more often. I have also started taking more pots away and not necessarily always waiting for the right situation to come. As I mentioned earlier, I have found that the tournament fields are getting tougher because there are more good players. Just playing the same old, easy style, which is waiting for others to make mistakes, is harder now, because you’ll bleed chips waiting. Not to mention that you won’t amass chips consistently by sitting there waiting. Basically, what I have decided is to get into hyper-focus mode so I can pay more attention and pick up tells. I want to depend more on that, and that means looking at people’s faces, their hands, and how they bet their chips. I find that by doing that, especially against online players, I am able to pick off continuation bluffs. By really focusing on paying attention to my opponent’s tendencies, I am able to get a read.
LH: Are there any changes you plan to make to your game in 2008?
DN: I want to try to maintain my poker playing on a regular basis. I have decided to play 15 hours per week on PokerStars. I play a variety of games, but generally I try to multi-table $25-$50 no-limit hold’em, $100-$200 or $200-$400 limit hold’em, and H.O.R.S.E., if there is a game going, but those are usually higher limits. I play some of the Sunday Million events; I just cashed in one last week for the first time in my life. I feel like playing online does keep my game sharp, and it also gives me a window into how some of the robotic online poker players think. I find ways to exploit them by playing online so that when I do play in the big live tournaments, I am better prepared. I also want to become a consistently better player on a daily basis.
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